Hi,

I upgraded my system to Kubuntu 12.04 with KDE 4.8.2 and now I can no longer logout, reboot or shutdown. When choosing one of these options my session is terminated and the system drops to console. KDM however is still running and seems to wait for the end of the session, alltough all processes associated with my login account are terminated. There really is nothing to wait for as even the X server terminated, so kdm should just launch a new instance.

The problem seems to be some configuration option in my home directory (again!). I created a new user with an empty home directory and when using this user I can properly logout, shutdown or reboot. I seem to have these kind of problems every time I update my KDE installation. I always have to delete my .kde directory or otherwise I would have some strange problems.

This time I really would like to avoid purging my .kde directory as I'm sick of doing all the configuration work again. What can I do to debug this problem?

I compared my .xsession-errors files from the two user accounts but there does not seem to be any significant difference. I also tried to "TerminateServer" true and false in my kdmrc configuration file but still KDM does not seem to recognize the end of the session. Why does KDM not realize that the X server terminated. Shouldn't it also restart the X server when it crashes?

What type of terminal are you dropped down to? A virtual terminal, or a basic terminal window? Are you logged in on this terminal?
If you are, what happens when you logout from it (try entering "exit" as the relevant command)